Zero waste/minimal waste shaving

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One reason I got interested in traditional shaving techniques was to reduce the environmental impact of my shaving.

So I thought I would start a thread about recommending methods and products to reduce the wastefulness of shaving. What would you recommend to help reduce what's thrown away, especially plastic?

My observations so far:
  • I'm pleased to say the Muehle DE razor and brush that I bought had no plastic packaging, only card and paper.
  • The Trumper's soap was unfortunately wrapped in plastic film.
  • The Personna blades come in a plastic box wrapped in plastic film, and while they seem very good, I may not buy them again for this reason.
  • The alum block had no plastic packaging, only a cardboard box.
  • I ordered from the Traditional Shaving Company who only use recyclable paper and compostable starch packaging.
There are some razor blades that come in a cardboard box, but judging from pictures, some of these cardboard boxes are wrapped in plastic film.

Can anyone recommend razor blades and hard shaving soaps that have no plastic packaging whatsoever?

Please add your own tips for reducing the environmental impact of shaving.
 
Foucault said:
One reason I got interested in traditional shaving techniques was to reduce the environmental impact of my shaving.

So I thought I would start a thread about recommending methods and products to reduce the wastefulness of shaving. What would you recommend to help reduce what's thrown away, especially plastic?

My observations so far:
  • I'm pleased to say the Muehle DE razor and brush that I bought had no plastic packaging, only card and paper.
  • The Trumper's soap was unfortunately wrapped in plastic film.
  • The Personna blades come in a plastic box wrapped in plastic film, and while they seem very good, I may not buy them again for this reason.
  • The alum block had no plastic packaging, only a cardboard box.
  • I ordered from the Traditional Shaving Company who only use recyclable paper and compostable starch packaging.
There are some razor blades that come in a cardboard box, but judging from pictures, some of these cardboard boxes are wrapped in plastic film.

Can anyone recommend razor blades and hard shaving soaps that have no plastic packaging whatsoever?

Please add your own tips for reducing the environmental impact of shaving.
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I am into traditional shaving to minimize my footprint as well. I hated the thought of throwing those plastic/metal cartridge blades and handles in the landfill.

My principles are:
  • Buy local as much as possible and minimize the shipping impact
  • If buying from an online vendor, bulk up the order as much as possible in order to minimize the shipping impact per item
  • Buy only blades that come in a cardboard tuck; I have ditched Wilkinson and Feather as they are packaged in plastic, I am using Gillette SharpEdges as they come in cardboard and are available locally. No impact on my shave quality.
  • I like the Copper Hat soaps for their performance, no sacrifice there. But I also like them because I they ship in paper and cardboard. They used to be available locally to me and should be in the future again. For the moment they are relatively local so shipping impact is lower.
  • I buy balms/creams/etc that are in glass so that the container is at least reusable and easier to recycle.
  • I collect all my old blades and recycle them in bulk when my container gets full.
I'm not perfect and could do a better job, especially with the local buying approach. But, especially with soap, I also want what I want.
 
Consider our steps towards negative waste shaving? Buying vintage razors, sprucing them up, enjoying them, moving them along to friends, generally keeping them from landfill.

That aside, we use soaps and brushes rather than canned goo, we used blades in minimal packaging and we don't dump amounts of plastic waste with every shave.

What we do is buy in a lot by post which has travel miles behind it, so I laud your attempts at buying more locally. My go-to soap is Mitchell's, made literally just down the road, but for the sake of convenience I'll buy it online and it arrives through my letterbox ... from, well, somewhere much further than a couple of miles down the road.

By definition, anything that becomes a market will seek to expand that market and so have increased environmental impact. Interesting to read supplier using recycled and biodegradable packaging. At our current stage of thinking, it's about neutralising impact.
 
I would imagine the soaps wrapped in plastic are to help retain whatever moisture is in them, soaps can lie for a very long time in a shop and if it dried out and degraded the quality of your shave then most likely you would not buy it again, so keeping it fresh for as long as possible helps you and the manufacturer to keep his good name, It is very near impossible to be plastic free today, supermarkets are the worst, pears wrapped in clam shell type packs ?, steaks/meat wrapped in heavy cling film seated on a plastic tray, too much stuff to mention it all, but I am sure we all do what we can...and our type of shaving is far more eco friendly than the plastic multi bladed and plastic wrapped carts.
 
Bob1955 said:
I would imagine the soaps wrapped in plastic are to help retain whatever moisture is in them, soaps can lie for a very long time in a shop and if it dried out and degraded the quality of your shave then most likely you would not buy it again, so keeping it fresh for as long as possible helps you and the manufacturer to keep his good name, It is very near impossible to be plastic free today, supermarkets are the worst, pears wrapped in clam shell type packs ?, steaks/meat wrapped in heavy cling film seated on a plastic tray, too much stuff to mention it all, but I am sure we all do what we can...and our type of shaving is far more eco friendly than the plastic multi bladed and plastic wrapped carts.
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Agree about this.

Shaving occupies a very small percentage of all of my purchases and even though I try to use as few single use plastics as possible, it's near enough impossible as still my purchases include milk cartons, vitamin bottles, then there's the world of wrapping for vegetables; my usage of

Back to shaving, I'm not a fan of the plastic containers that contain blades I find them really fiddly to deal with and I'm not a fan of blades that are often sold in them (Personna Red, Wilkinson, Feather); the majority of blades are sold without any plastic though.

For brushes, there are animal hair brushes with wooden handles that are plastic free.

As for soaps there are a few out there which are largely or entirely plastic free, eg Arko, Valobra sticks, but even thought it comes in plastic wrapping IMO for wastage it's hard to beat the the big 1kg blocks of Vitos, Cella and so on, as one of those blocks will last several years of daily shaves.
 
Almost all of my razors are 70+ years old.
I use either vintage injector blades over 30 years old or GEM blades that come in a plastic box for 100 blades - that's 700-1000 shaves.
One box will last me half a decade at least.
I can't remember what my Tabac soap refill was wrapped in, but one of them lasts for a very long time and I hardly use anything else.
My "plastic" brushes will probably outlast me.
I think I'm doing OK compared to the average cartridge/goo shaver.
How to improve? Straight razor shaves with olive oil? No thanks.
I'm probably causing more environmental damage by farting rather than from shaving.
 
Vintage razors are a great idea.

I wouldn't mind a vintage straight razor and then I wouldn't even have to throw away blades. But I'm a bit scared to shave my whole head with a straight razor haha.

And yes, I agree about all the other products that I need to live being a much worse and bigger problem.

Does anyone have experience with Lord razor blades? I was thinking of getting Lord Super Chrome blades next time, but I can't tell if there's any plastic packaging.
 
Foucault said:
Vintage razors are a great idea.

I wouldn't mind a vintage straight razor and then I wouldn't even have to throw away blades. But I'm a bit scared to shave my whole head with a straight razor haha.

And yes, I agree about all the other products that I need to live being a much worse and bigger problem.

Does anyone have experience with Lord razor blades? I was thinking of getting Lord Super Chrome blades next time, but I can't tell if there's any plastic packaging.
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Lord blades are in a cardboard tuck with no plastic wrapping from what I remember. I'll double check for you later.
 
Foucault said:
Vintage razors are a great idea.

I wouldn't mind a vintage straight razor and then I wouldn't even have to throw away blades. But I'm a bit scared to shave my whole head with a straight razor haha.

And yes, I agree about all the other products that I need to live being a much worse and bigger problem.

Does anyone have experience with Lord razor blades? I was thinking of getting Lord Super Chrome blades next time, but I can't tell if there's any plastic packaging.
Click to expand...
donnie_arko said:
Yes they do, as do most blades be it Indian, Pakistani and Russian.

For a lack of waste, IMO Personna Lab Blues & Med Preps not only have no plastic but come in boxes of at least 100, no cardboard packets for 5/10 blades.
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This is a tuck off of a cardboard hanger. No wrapping on it. The tucks of Shark SS I have are the same
 
Just had a quick look at the more accessible bit of the blade/soap stash and the blades which seemed to have just cardboard and waxed paper packaging were Personna Med Preps, Kai, Gillette Silver Blue, Astra Superior Platinum, Rapira Platinum Lux and Polsilver Super Iridium. Some might have had an all over plastic wrap at one time, but I'm sure the Med Preps didn't.
The soaps without any obvious plastic were Tabac Original, Le Pere Lucien (metal tin), D R. Harris and a couple of types of Saponificio Varesino. The latter definitely had no plastic wrapping at any point, but some of the other ones were of varying age and might have had wrappings at some time.
 
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